Same Three Girls

I was always amused by people — especially women who seem to have a universal knee-jerk distaste for the idea that beauty can be measured and ranked — who believed that culture, or the media, or Hollywood, or parents, or peers, or the magic nose goblin, were somehow responsible for what gives men boners. The religion of cultural conditioning is as cultic as any organized religion. It has many adherents because, like traditional religions, it appeals to false hopes and placates with soothing lies.

No magazine, TV show, movie, or “groupthink” ever influenced the blood flow to my manhood. Nor does it do so for any other man. When my balls grew hair, the first time I saw a silky thigh was like a thermonuclear blast of lust that fried my brain. My heart raced when I laid eyes on a pretty girl. Nothing influenced this visceral reaction; it was as hardwired as breathing and shitting.

So when my buddies and I go out I am never surprised when we almost always agree on the top three hottest girls in the venue. If you gathered every guy in a bar on a busy Saturday night and asked them to rank the girls the same ones would appear on the tops of all their lists. You don’t need scientific studies to prove what common sense already tells you — that beauty is not subjective if men all agree on which girls are beautiful.

But for those who live in a world of self-delusion and get hives when the words evolutionary psychology are mentioned, there is now a growing body of studies in the neurosciences to buttress casual observation that not only is female beauty objective, but so is beauty in the arts.

This study found that an abstract sense of beauty is at least partly innate.

When people were shown pictures of sculptures in a new study, brain scans suggest they judged beauty by at least partly hard-wired standards.

Researchers in Italy showed volunteers original and distorted images of Classical and Renaissance sculptures. The scientists picked 14 volunteers with no experience in art theory to try to see what role pure biology had to do with judging art.

The proportions of the sculptures in the study followed the golden ratio. And the original images of them strongly activated sets of brain cells that the distorted images did not—including the insula, a brain structure that mediates emotions.

“We were very surprised that very small modifications to images of the sculptures led to very strong modifications in brain activity,” researcher Giacomo Rizzolatti, a neuroscientist at the University of Parma, told LiveScience.

In addition, instead of asking volunteers to simply enjoy these pictures, the researchers also had them judge how beautiful or ugly each was. The images thought of as beautiful activated the right amygdala, a brain structure that responds to memories laden with emotional value. (The original images were often judged by the test subjects as more beautiful than distorted ones.)

The results indicate that the sense of beauty is based on hard-wired notions triggered in the insula and one’s experiences, and then activated in the amygdala. Still, the scientists caution the findings cannot necessarily be generalized across cultures.

The conclusions of this study support the notion that the fingerpainting known as modern “art” is a fraud perpetrated on the masses by elitist snobs who needed to devise a false criteria for separating themselves from the gauche plebes.

Here is a study that shows men’s preferences for a female 0.7 waist to hip ratio has a real basis in biological necessity.

Controlling for other correlates of cognitive ability, women with lower WHRs and their children have significantly higher cognitive test scores, and teenage mothers with lower WHRs and their children are protected from cognitive decrements associated with teen births. These findings support the idea that WHR reflects the availability of neurodevelopmental resources and thus offer a new explanation for men’s preference for low WHR.

Summary: evolution designed men to prefer sexy hourglass figures because women who have them give birth to smarter babies.

“According to the figurines we found, young women were beautifully dressed, like today’s girls in short tops and mini skirts, and wore bracelets around their arms,” said archaeologist Julka Kuzmanovic-Cvetkovic.

prehistoric boy shorts underneath

She looks pretty thin. So much for the hypothesis that men used to like fat girls before the evil fashion industry warped their minds to chase after thin girls. 7,500 hundred years ago men lusted for a hot bod in a mini skirt, same as today. And, same as today, women knew what turned men on.

There are mountains of papers which show that beautiful faces of both sexes have traits in common. And that what is beautiful and what is ugly is not a mystery or in the eye of the beholder. Case in point:

i eat babies. these lips were made for blowing.

A tsunami of evidence from the neurosciences (as opposed to the soft sciences of sociology and cultural anthropology where radicals with axes to grind have created a mutual masturbation society of feelgood lies) is slowly and inexorably repudiating decades of dearly-held and rabidly guarded cherished beliefs.

There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth as their rancid ideology is ground to dust. And I will taste their tears of unfathomable sadness…mm, so yummy and sweet!

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130 Responses

What are you saying, exactly? That there are universal standards of beauty? So what? I think most people agree, although of course it’s also obvious that personal attraction will be very subjective.

But how does this statement have anything to do with feminists? It’s like you found something to say that most people would agree with, and then used it to say, without any foundation whatsoever,” This proves feminists are wrong and men should get laid by the hottest women and it’s science.”

Do you think images of scantily clad men/excessively attractive men are as ubquitous as media images of women (particularly in states of undress, photoshopped, etc.)? Think about the attractiveness of male leads in movies vs. the attractiveness of female leads (yes, there are exceptions, but what is the norm?) I happen to love Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, Scott Glenn and Tommy Lee Jones (as actors) but boy are they past it when it comes to looks.

BTW, did you know that the incidence of eating disorders in men is increasing? I think that objectification of men is finally starting to have an impact on your health, which I think really bad. I wish that most women were as body confident as most men, not vice versa.

I think the ovulation studies are fascinating. A sadder one (which I’d have to look for) is that rape victims are disproportionately likely to get pregnant (meaning that those targeted are disproportionately likely to be ovulating.)

Plus, if we really want to get biochemical with the whole attraction thing, women prefer the smell of men with MHC II (a cell surface molecule associated with the immune system) similar (but not identical to) their fathers. Unless the women are on the pill, in which case, they can’t tell.

Settling is just as hard-wired as lusting after beauty. Cognitive dissonance, monkey-style, has helped us survive.

Women select for feminine traits when it comes to partnering with men in long-term relationships.

Smell is another essential component to attaction. Women smell better to men at certain times during their cycles.

And finally. love is even more powerful and primal than sex. This is the ultimate evolutionary trait, and it’s conceivable (pun intended) that two people who fall in love with each other have more children and pass on more of their genes.

As an Asian American male, I know that U.S. media portrayals or lack of portrayals of Asian American men create the perception that we are not desirable. This phenomenon is particularly underscored when you go to an Asian country, where the population is homogenous, and Asian men are seen as pretty damn hot.

[Quick, name a leading Asian American male lead actor?]

The typical response is Jackie Chan or Jet Li, but they’re Asian not Asian American (it’s like calling Dikembe Mutombo African American). After a few seconds, you might come up with John Cho or Kal Penn, but even these two are just starting to get lead roles in minor comedies. And we all remember the debacle of Jet Li not kissing Aaliyah at the end of Romeo Must Die, which was supposed to be a spin on Romeo and Juliet!

This tangent aside, my point is that attraction, while partially based in biological urges, is also socially and psychologically driven. Any flip through a psychology 101 textbook will reveal in its section on attraction that the 3 main factors of attraction are proximity, familiarity and similarity.

M Bradwell: Women are valued primarily for their looks, and men primarily for their status. If that’s the gist of your complaint, then your beef is with nature, not with the media.

Men are objectified in the media too, but not so much on their prettyness (Keanu and Leonardo are pre-teen girl eyecandy) as on their masculine strength, confidence, charisma, and ability to fight off 10 armed opponents.

Not that I’m complaining about it. I can’t equal James Bond in his all-around exquisite excellence or Charles Bronson in his badassness, but I’m glad that those ideal/heroic icons are out there.

I happen to think the focus on looks vs. personality is a lot more culturally constructed then what your postings suggest. (Or how I understand them, that is.)

For example, naked women (in our current social context) are basically defined as sex. Naked men are not. I’ve had any number of straight female friends say that naked male bodies are not inherently sexual or beautiful. (It makes me wonder whether they are really repressed, or what, exactly, they find attractive about their boyfriends.) I’m not kidding. I happen to think they are.

Plus, if you look at greek art, the male nude was celebrated as beautiful in a way that it no longer is (for the most part).

Regarding women being valued mainly for their looks, I think that is also culturally constructed. For example, in Greek epics, men and women alike are described based on their physical features (apparently the unibrow was once attractive, who knew) but men are also described based on other qualities, where women rarely are. But in Icelandic saga literature, women are always described as being smart, entertaining, good conversationalists—and beautiful, almost as an afterthought. (And guess which culture was not obsessed with physical virginity and gave women and men equal rights to divorce and take their property with them?)

I think that there is stronger cultural conditioning brought to bear on women that it is “shallow” to judge men by their looks. I don’t think the same cultural conditioning is imposed on most men. But I do agree with the MRAs that there is a strong cultural pressure for men to be success objects. I just don’t personally buy into it, nor do most of my friends, and I encourage guys I know to run like hell when it becomes clear that a woman shows inordinate interest in the job/money/car.

In other words, I think you have identified a dynamic that exists, but I disagree with you about its cause and the extent to which it influences us. What Hope said, basically.

Re: wit, my professor thought it was their way of getting through the depressing Icelandic winters.

I dunno, I’ve seen an attractive man across a crowded room and gotten my flirt on–maybe the dynamic you’ve identified has to do more with who is doing the chasing rather than who responds to what. Now, if you could show that women pursued men more based on personality than looks . . .

Or we could agree, almost entirely. Didn’t so much expect to find that here. :)

I think location has more to do with it than anything else. I grew up in a predominantly white Polish small town. All of the girls that everyone thought were attractive were blond and tall. The shorter, and often better looking brunettes were regarded as second tier, and I won’t even mention the few Hispanic, and Asian women, one of which was absolutely smoking, that no one liked until college.

That was quite a difference to when I went to a rich private high school and a pretentious East Coast College , where people seemed to be more open, or less racist, depending on how you looked at it. What was really interesting was when I went back to visit friends in my small town, I was suddenly more interested in the girls that no one else cared about, where my newer friends found them much hotter.

All of the girls that everyone thought were attractive were blond and tall.

Your story could explain my middle school and high school experiences. The few guys that took interest to me were also interested in foreign cultures, were enthusiastically learning other languages (foreign language classes were part of graduation requirements), and often traveled to non-European countries.

it’s just that looks figure much more in what we respond to

Most women know this and look after their appearances accordingly. Some women are offended by heavily endorsed makeup / clothing, and the kind of “pandering” to male drooling in mass marketing (which works extremely well). I have to admit, I went through a period of that myself when it comes to portrayal of women in video games. Then, some time during college I started embracing revealing dress, to the chagrin of my then boyfriend, now husband. He joked that I should only wear potato sacks.

Male nudes in art were probably mainly celebrated as asexual objects of perfection

I have always actually preferred looking at attractive female faces to famous male faces (with a few exceptions like Matt Damon, whom I think is more attractive than Brad Pitt by a long shot). But a ripped, mascular, masculine body is certainly a turn-on for the ladies. I’ve known guys who look quite a bit like the Greek artistic ideal, and believe me when I say that women do not simply look at them asexually.

I believe that beauty is an “absolute value”. At the same time, I think that the beauty people are actually able to perceive in any given era is based to some degree on cultural conditioning. In other words, when a new and unfamiliar type of beauty is introduced to people, whether in the realm of interior decoration, the visual arts, fashions in dress, or fashions in appearance, they often have a difficult time seeing it as beautiful, at first, until it becomes familiar.

What is considered beautiful in the female face and figure probably changes less than in other areas of human experience, over the generations, for the simple reason that symmetry and good health dictate so much of it. All the same, the cumulative changes in the fashionable face over time can add up to enough that someone looking at the photo of a famous beauty of 40 years ago may wonder why she was ever perceived as such.

I had a friend who – at the height of the late 70s/early 80s obsession with high sculpted cheekbones – kept insisting that the young Elizabeth Taylor was ugly. That’s not to say that Taylor was ugly by any objective standard, but only that my friend was blinded to Taylor’s beauty by fashion.

Men are less likely to be blind in this particular manner, but they too can be fooled by the popular tastes of the moment, by their inability to see beauty unless it’s well-packaged, via good grooming and sexy clothing, and packaged in a familiar way. Men’s taste for a certain waist-hip ratio may not change, but the sculpted female bodies (not of professional female athletes, but those of women who work out in the gym regularly, I mean) admired now would have seemed very unattractive to many, perhaps most, men of an earlier generation. How many men find the flat-chested and bony bodies of many professional models really attractive, even when their waist-hip ratio is right? Not the ones who appear in Sports Illustrated, but the ones who appear on the catwalk?

I bet the top three girls are clear choices you can agree on, but let’s see the next seven who would round out a top 10 would be the ones that you all would argue about… right? I bet that’s when the subjectiveness kicks in.

Human beings are definitely hardwired for certain things, and any woman or man who will not accept this fact is deluding him/her self. Everything plays into this sort of stuff. For example, an argument with my redhaired friend led to some investigation on why some hair colors are popular and some are not. Apparently during Cro Magnon times, blondes were perceived as a more attractive alternative than their brunette peers and thus, men would mate more with blondes rather than brunettes, leading to the high number of blonde haired people in Europe. http://www.ehbonline.org/article/PIIS1090513805000590/abstract.

Actually, I think you (and everyone who reads this blog) should sign up (free!) to view the articles in this journal – http://www.ehbonline.org/. This month alone has “Ovulatory cycle effects on tip earnings by lap dancers: economic evidence for human estrus?”, “The effects of sex and childlessness on the association between status and reproductive output in modern society”, and “Sensation seeking and men’s face preferences”.

But the most universal preference, in both men and women, is for symmetry. The WHR isn’t constant across cultures, is actually now less favored than low BMI in ours. In cultures with starving men, overweight women are preferred. And looking at actresses/models, they have gotten thinner.

What this may mean, and what I think it means, is more that there is a disconnect between images of beauty in movies and in print media than in real life. What we feminists say (oh no, she di’nt) is that this distorts women’s self perceptions. I don’t know whether it distorts men’s perceptions of us as well.

I do know that men routinely underestimate my weight, god bless ‘em.

Many of the WHR studies are problematic because they use line drawings. Oh, and I don’t think you’ve posted a single picture of a woman with a WHR of 0.7 on this site, as you tend to post pictures of very slender women. Maybe HK, but she has clearly just exhaled in that picture.

Finally, while you may all be able to agree on the top 3 women, the ranking breaks down after that. I doubt you would all agree on the same ranking for all of the women in the bar. While everyone can agree that CZJ, for one, is gorgeous, I know of plenty of beautiful actresses who men will disagree about. Violently. Also, some men prefer blondes, or exotics. And then there is the whole colorism thing–any wonder that Ash Rai, and most popular Indian women movie stars are pale?

M Bradwell, I don’t have a whole lot of time to respond in depth so I’ll just point out a couple of alternate interptretations of your examples.

Male nudes in art were probably mainly celebrated as asexual objects of perfection, or on other cases this had something to do with the man-boy thing of the Classical world and (latently) with Renaissance artists.

And I’m not saying that looks are important in women’s appraisal of men – they just don’t figure as much into the equation as they do in men’s appraisal of women.

Icelandics weren’t the only ones who valued wit/conversation et al. in women. Those qualities were praised Europe-wide as signs of high status and breeding.

And I’m not saying that men like dumb women – we don’t, at least not for more than 30 minutes… it’s just that looks figure much more in what we respond to (per entire post).

m bradwell:The WHR isn’t constant across cultures, is actually now less favored than low BMI in ours.

wrong. the 0.7 WHR is a universal.

In cultures with starving men, overweight women are preferred.

i hear this argument from feminists all the time and i have yet to see any hard evidence for it.
there is a difference between selecting a wife who is fat in a land of scarcity and getting an erection for a thin woman. often, fat women come from wealthy families and this may be a mitigating factor in mate choice.
have penile plethysmographs been given to starving men to see if they respond to fat women more than slender women? if not, then your assertion is empty sloganeering.

And looking at actresses/models, they have gotten thinner.

adjust for age and get back to me.
a lot of the actresses bordering on anorexia are over 30 because there is a belief, not unjustified, that staying thin will ward off the ravages of aging.
alos, i believe that anorexia has a biological origin stemming from a very deep innate recognition by a woman’s brain that her chances of reproductive success are intimately tied up with her ability to stay slender, and which has gone “haywire” somehow.

Many of the WHR studies are problematic because they use line drawings.

the reason for the simplistic drawings is to avoid confounding effects like race and skin color.
nevertheless, other WHR studies with more fleshy models showed the same 0.7 WHR.

Maybe HK, but she has clearly just exhaled in that picture.

you wish.

I doubt you would all agree on the same ranking for all of the women in the bar.

no, but the trend would be unmistakeable.
or: most women have got one point of wiggle room, tops.

I know of plenty of beautiful actresses who men will disagree about. Violently.

violently? classy crowd you run with.
this reminds me of nerds arguing over the merits of two competing high end video cards. to the average consumer, each card more than meets their computing needs. axiom #43: the smaller the difference between two status objects, the more the differences are emphasized.

And then there is the whole colorism thing–any wonder that Ash Rai, and most popular Indian women movie stars are pale?

relative to race, studies have shown that men prefer lighter skinned women.

> The conclusions of this study support
> the notion that the fingerpainting known
> as modern “art” is a fraud perpetrated
> on the masses by elitist snobs who
> needed to devise a false criteria for
> separating themselves from the gauche
> plebes.

Some people draw too many broad conclusions from simple data. Be careful of that. Who says “beauty” is a criterion of modern art?

dizzy choked on her own man-hating bile:What are you saying, exactly? That there are universal standards of beauty? So what? I think most people agree, although of course it’s also obvious that personal attraction will be very subjective.

do you always contradict yourself within the span of one sentence?

But how does this statement have anything to do with feminists?

so you’ve been living in a cave your whole life. glad to clear that up.
to get you up to speed, feminist ideology has been the leading propagator of the lie that social conditioning and various sundry “cultural influences” have shaped and altered the definition of beauty, both what men find beautiful and how women perceive their own beauty, and that these shifting standards have been used by the “patriarchy” to keep women enslaved to… well, who the hell knows what’s enslaving them.
naomi wolf’s “the beauty myth” ring a bell?
mention the word “rubens” in a college classroom and it’ll be the frothy-mouthed feminists who jump first at making the logical leap that rubens proves fat women were once sexually enticing to men.
no surprise now that science is overturning everything feminism stands for you and your ilk are furiously backpedaling with these “oh that isn’t what we meant” face-saving counterattacks.

It’s like you found something to say that most people would agree with, and then used it to say, without any foundation whatsoever,” This proves feminists are wrong and men should get laid by the hottest women and it’s science.”

that non sequitur gets a 7.5 on the 1-10 scale of laughable logical errors.

Huh? You are missing some key, key parts in this, “argument.”

throw in another key and you might unlock the secret to better reading comprehension.

A universal standard of beauty is one thing. A tendency to prefer redheads is another. Both are real, and valid, as far as they go. Neither have anything to do with feminists, or prove something universal about mating and dating.

And I read Naomi Wolf’s book – you seem to have read only the jacket blurb. It’s not about how oppressed women are by being forced to wear lipstick. It’s about the idea, prevalent in our culture and very thoroughly outlined on this blog, that women have nothing to offer but looks. And how that assumption permeates our culture and shapes young women’s lives and makes money for advertisers who play on women’s fears in order to sell more lipstick. M Bradwell said it all better above, though.

Anyway, I think you just want an excuse to make some more insults and try to sound superior and drag me into a discussion that you are not, really, capable of having, in order to say more things that I will then defend myself against and blah blah blah. Is that “game?” Because it’s annoying… (Also very similar to the patterns used by domestic abusers to control their chosen target).

there is a belief, not unjustified, that staying thin will ward off the ravages of aging.

Only to a point. In the ’35-year-old women who already look 50′ cohort, most of the worst offenders tend to be noticeably underweight. I’m definitely not trying to say that fat chicks age better, but I am saying that thin women’s faces definitely show their age and become drawn-looking before ‘healthier’ women’s faces do.

A universal standard of beauty is one thing. A tendency to prefer redheads is another.

your implication is that hair color preference somehow carries the same weight as facial structure in arousing men’s passions.
i can assure you this is not so. brown hair on heidi klum will hardly lower her appeal in men’s eyes, while red hair on janeane garofalo will not do much to raise hers.
the universal standard of beauty, which you agree exists, swamps the relatively miniscule effects of more subjectively enticing peripheral adornments like hair color and makeup when analyzing what it is that arouses men.
and caucasian male preference for blonde haired women may even have a biological basis if theories of sexual selection for blondeism have any validity.

Neither have anything to do with feminists, or prove something universal about mating and dating.

actually, they do, as i described above.
feminists have been on the leading edge of attempts to redefine sexual preference and beauty standards, and to dismiss inborn predilections.
they have also staked ground in promulgating the invidious lies of the margaret mead school of culturally conditioned mating choice.
the scientifically proven universal standard of beauty strikes right at the heart of one of their core beliefs.

prevalent in our culture and very thoroughly outlined on this blog, that women have nothing to offer but looks.

read more carefully.
in the sexual market, women bargain primarily with their looks.
this fact of life does not preclude them from doing other worthwhile things with their lives.

makes money for advertisers who play on women’s fears in order to sell more lipstick.

“I’ve had any number of straight female friends say that naked male bodies are not inherently sexual or beautiful.”

from a genetic standpoint it would be quite dangerous for women to find male bodies attractive in the way that males find female bodies. If they did they might jump into bed with a man on the basis of looks alone, a potentially suicidal action from her genes perspective as she would probably be left a lone parent. It’s also why most women appear to find the penis amusing, and prefer the lights off in bed.

When women in their twenties are pretty thin they look younger like teen girls. However, when they reach their late twenties they will start to look older because the wrinkles on their face will be much more visible. Older women (27-40 years) probably look best with BMI’s around 20-25.
Dizzy is just another woman having problems with the fact that her prime years are over. I believe she is in her midd to late thirties and is despairing over the fact that she can’t attract a nice husband anymore.

For a long period of time, women lived in kin groups. So shacking up with a symmetrical, muscular, unrelated male hottie would have been a good strategy. Now, having out of control lust would be a problem, but with self-control, women can be sexually attracted to men but not yield to them. I don’t think that those few among my friends who liked the male form were more promiscuous.

there is a good evolutionary reason why women are not as viscerally aroused by the sight of a male body as men are by the female form

Which is a good opening to bring up a point I’ve been thinking of for a while. All this focus on the female body, and the ideal WHR, and the way in which female looks decline with age – has anyone bothered to think of how a very substantial proportion of the male population looks? In recent years, as I’ve gotten much more involved in fitness, I’ve been noticing the way men look, and it’s not good news. After age 30 or 35, and definitely after 40, the average man turns soft. By “soft” I don’t necessarily mean obese, though there are plenty of men like that, but a paunchy, un-muscled, out-of-shape look that has as much in common with the ideal Greek-statue male body as Mount Everest has in common with an anthill. For most men over 30, “exercise” means sitting in front of the TV watching the game while sucking down endless quantities of beer, buffalo wings and nachos, with the occasional round of cartball on weekends.

there is a good evolutionary reason why women are not as viscerally aroused by the sight of a male body as men are by the female form.

Actually, the research concerning pornography concluded oppositely. Women in fact show physical “arousal” when shown sexual imagery, including animal sex acts. Men, comparatively, do not get an erection from something that they dislike, for example rape scenes.

Women lubricated watching violent rape scenes, but reported that they disliked what they saw. This is evolutionarily protective for the woman, whose reproductive tract would have been far more damaged when she was raped — and rape was common in a more barbaric time.

Interestingly enough, 50% of men in the study gained an erection from watching a rape scene, and the other 50% did not, and reported feeling disgust at the sight. This might mean that some men are predisposed to rape — especially in the absence of laws against such acts — while others hate it so much that they did not get an erection from seeing a young, reproductively fertile women. These men require their women to enjoy themselves and give consent before they themselves could enjoy the acts.

random hookups with outgroup male hotties would have been a risky strategy unless she had a beta provider at home to take care of any resulting bastard children.

This is simply not how it was done. Some men simply took what they wanted — a woman whom he took a liking to, regardless of whether or not she chose him. Most of the protection was done by a female’s alpha mate who would keep rapists at bay by either killing them or maiming them enough that they did not go near his choice mate again. This is where I think love and jealousy come in evolutionarily (a man madly in love with a woman will kill and harm another man who touched her), and not any female selection strategies.

My personal suspicion (which I don’t voice often, because I don’t want to offend any of my male friends — though I did have a male friend who told me he had fantasies about raping women) is that betas are much more likely to rape than alphas, since even the smaller-formed betas are still physically stronger than most women, and this method helps them pass on their genes.

Interestingly enough, 50% of men in the study gained an erection from watching a rape scene, and the other 50% did not, and reported feeling disgust at the sight. This might mean that some men are predisposed to rape — especially in the absence of laws against such acts — while others hate it so much that they did not get an erection from seeing a young, reproductively fertile women.

Were the men shown actual rapes, for example from security-camera footage, or simulated rapes performed by actors? If the latter was the case, and if (as is likely) it was apparent that the rapes were simulated, I wouldn’t necessarily read much into the study results. Being stimulated by a fake rape may be a little “odd,” but it’s orders of magnitude different from being stimulated by the real thing.

Okay, enough with the pseudo-science please. If you’re going to cite a study please cite it properly. You need to describe the setup of the experiment, what variables were being measured, and other relevent data necessary to establish validity of the conclusion.

Also, for you evolutionary psychology subscribers out there, please don’t say rape is passed down through genes. If you’re going to make scientific arguments, please do so correctly.

All that genes do is code for goddamn proteins. They do not make you rape someone. Yes, the proteins your body codes for can make your more aggressive decrease your inhibitions, make your more selfish, etc. However, this is thorugh hormones and proteins, which bonds to the surfaces of cells. Yes they can influence certain traits, which dramatically increase your chance of actually raping someone. Yes, some people’s proteins are so fucked up they’re actually crazy. For the average person though their behavior is still a (semi)-conscious choice.

Unless you understand how genes that code for MC1R protein act on the surface of melanocytes to regulate melanogenesis, please refrain from making conclusive statements about behaviors as a result of evolution.

Thank you,

Person Who Paid Attention iIn Biochemistry and Organic Chemistry Because He Had No Life

You ‘ll have to learn to follow some sort of chain of logical thought if you ever hope to avenge your debate loss.

Either you’re doing it unintentionally, through ignorance. Or it’s intentional, through some misguided idea that he who makes the most garbled, impossible-to-follow, and unsupported assertions wins. Again, though, this twisted “that’s what SHE said” mockery of logic is a pattern used by domestic abusers to avoid confronting their own lack of support for their behavior and internal contradictions. I once thought you were merely amusingly self-delusional. I’m starting to think you need more serious help.

Okay, enough with the pseudo-science please. If you’re going to cite a study please cite it properly. You need to describe the setup of the experiment, what variables were being measured, and other relevent data necessary to establish validity of the conclusion.

I didn’t realize I was writing a term paper here. I’ll find more scientific sources next time than the NYT. For the most part, I’m merely making generalized responses to generalized assertions (i.e. women don’t respond visually to male bodies).

please don’t say rape is passed down through genes.

That was a quote from an article that discussed two different scientific theories about the observed behavior of rape — which is not exclusive to humans and is more prevalent in certain other animals and insects — and briefly pondered whether it is an adaptation or a bi-product of other evolutionary adaptations. If you have a problem with the phrasing of it, bring it up to the author.

All that genes do is code for goddamn proteins. They do not make you rape someone.

This statement “XYZ makes men rape” was never actually made. I was very careful in how I phrased my statements: “some men are predisposed to rape — especially in the absence of laws against such acts” and “betas who ordinarily would not pass on their genes might be more likely candidates for rape.”

Notice how I never used non-ambiguous words, nor did I say the prevalence of rape was high (in fact it has become lower in the U.S. in recent years) — merely that men’s physiological reaction was more limited in its scope than women’s. I don’t disagree that the average person has choice, which is why I emphasized physiological effects to rape depictions rather than acts of rape.

My original point was that women become physiologically “ready” for sex more easily than men. As usual, my penchant for off-topic rambling made the point get lost in the shuffle. To get back on track, I’ll link to a more pertinent article — Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty.

Characterization: Ms. X is a battleaxe/nottie/dried up old prune with a temper and a neurotic fear of male sexuality.

(Translation: A woman disagreed with me.)

Quotation out of context: (Truncated version of something you said, taken entirely out of context in two ways, 1) statements made by other parties that precipitated your comment not included, 2) statements surrounding your statement that contradict his characterization of said statement are omitted.)

(Translation: I am pretending to fight fair and handily defeat you while I am engaging in rhetorical slight-of-hand, albeit clumsily.)

So shacking up with a symmetrical, muscular, unrelated male hottie would have been a good strategy.

random hookups with outgroup male hotties would have been a risky strategy unless she had a beta provider at home to take care of any resulting bastard children.
cuchulainn is right – there is a good evolutionary reason why women are not as viscerally aroused by the sight of a male body as men are by the female form.

Gannon, you don’t make your case stronger by resorting to these tactics. Too much personal invective makes you sound as shrill and irrational as the feminists you purport to despise for employing such rhetorical devices.

Are you seriously contending that you treat women with the same respect you accord men?

I can provide links to this one.

I can’t recall the last time you directed an ad hom. at a guy, even one who disagreed with you.

Oh, and Dizzy, I hear you. Anyone else who actually tries to evaluate the content of what you say instead of being put off by your direct approach (which considering the tone of his post, was measured in my view.)

For example, null0pointer, what if I said this to you:

Although a man’s pocketbook primarily defines his sexual marketability, male personality and a willingness to learn how to sexually please a woman count as well, but those factors only work synergistically with status and money. Men who’ve lost money in the tech bust can work out every day, wear knockoff armani, and be famous for providing oral sex and multiple orgasms, but it will be in vain. Women will look past him at the older, more wealthy, versions of himself. Younger men (between 20-30) who may eventually achieve status and money, can compete against the older competition by going down right away. Nevertheless, this is a temporary fix. Any woman worth having will get her rocks off with the young swain and save her commitment for the silver fox.

Would you want to date a woman who thought like that? Would you want a woman like that out dating your guy friends? Even if they were older and had money?

i think the alpha beta distinction is both contextual and a bit silly.

if you buy into getting laid = alpha male, then guys who used to rape women were the alpha males back then.

on this blog there is way too much weight to partial “evolutionary” evidence — the assumption being we tend to do what we tend to do because it is the right thing (more optimal anyway) to do.

we can talk about evolution and selection and all that, but as people we make decisions (and often mistakes) based on the information as we see it.

we tend not to save in good times because we assume good times will continue (asset bubbles and so on) for example. criminals (typcial ones) don’t consider the end game of their actions, they just consider that they are not likely to be caught for the next marginal crime so the commit it, they don’t consider retiring or even the actual expected loss from a committing a crime.

we make similar non-optimal decisions wrt purchases and job choices. these are common foibles of human nature, and we are doing our best to be informed and unemotional when we make them.

throw in our emotions and you can see why we (men and women) can be big fuck ups in love.

in big cities women don’t fear getting raped or having a bad reputation from being with many men, so as this blog outlines they might tend to hop from “alpha” to “alpha” until they realize this isn’t working out for them, and then get married. this is counter to the gannon idea of marrying a “good” man while young.

all over the world men get caught up in how hot a woman is and spend money and effort to woo women with no results when they could have gone for a less hot chick. of course this seems to have given way to the “beta” man that he talks about who just eliminates himself from looking for hot women and then bids up ugly girls who shit on him anyway (or fuck “alphas” on the side).

the reality IMO is that we don’t use information as well as we think we do and make dumb fucking decisions, both men and women, wrt fucking and dating (and marrying too). you can break it down to biology, but any attempt to say what is alpha or beta (in general, without specific context) is meaningless.

he thinks being an alpha male is measured by how much women want you. that shit depends on the other men around you and the women around you, and is a very feminine view point. a hundred years or so ago being alpha was owning land making something more of yourself, fucking women was secondary — you could always find a young bride or fuck hookers.

the point of this article is spot on tho — unlike taste in food or music what men consider attractive is in a pretty narrow range.

Were the men shown actual rapes, for example from security-camera footage, or simulated rapes performed by actors? If the latter was the case, and if (as is likely) it was apparent that the rapes were simulated, I wouldn’t necessarily read much into the study results.

I couldn’t find the original article that cited the figure. According to this article, usually all that was needed to dampen the effect of an erection was “hearing a description of an encounter where the man is forcing the woman to have sex, and the woman is in distress or pain” — except in cases of convicted rapists and when the man is angry, specifically at a female. And yes, the penile plethysmograph was used.

I found this part particularly interesting:

“Very often the rapists say that the trigger for the rape was when a woman made them angry, usually by rebuffing a sexual overture. The men experienced the rebuff as an insult to their manhood that intensified their emotional misery.”

This supports my theory that betas who ordinarily would not pass on their genes (or what he might call omegas) might be more likely candidates for rape. It also explains why women tend to find certain men to be “creepy” and deliberately avoid such men. Women are drawn to alpha types like flies to fruit because they know that these men generally do not need to rape to get sex, and also can protect them from potential rapists.

Since women are choosy, men have been selected for finding a way to be chosen. One way to do that is to possess traits that women prefer: men with symmetrical body features are attractive to women, presumably because such features are a sign of health. A second way that men can gain access to women is by defeating other men in fights or other kinds of competitions — thereby gaining power, resources and social status, other qualities that women find attractive.

Rape can be understood as a third kind of sexual strategy: one more way to gain access to females. There are several mechanisms by which such a strategy could function. For example, men might resort to rape when they are socially disenfranchised, and thus unable to gain access to women through looks, wealth or status. Alternatively, men could have evolved to practice rape when the costs seem low — when, for instance, a woman is alone and unprotected (and thus retaliation seems unlikely), or when they have physical control over a woman (and so cannot be injured by her). Over evolutionary time, some men may have succeeded in passing on their genes through rape, thus perpetuating the behavior.

There is no doubt that rape has evolutionary — and thus genetic — origins. All traits and behaviors stem from a complex interplay between genes and the environment. If rape is an adaptation, men must possess genes that exist specifically because rape increased reproductive success. If rape turns out to be merely a side effect of other adaptations, then the genes involved exist for reasons that have nothing to do with rape. Either way, however, the evolutionary perspective explains a number of otherwise puzzling facts about the persistence of rape among human males.

For example, if rape is evolutionary in origin, it should be a threat mostly to women of childbearing age. And, in fact, young adult women are vastly overrepresented among rape victims in the female population as a whole, and female children and post-reproductive-age women are greatly underrepresented.

By the same token, if rape has persisted in the human population through the action of sexual selection, rapists should not seriously injure their victims — the rapist’s reproductive success would be hampered, after all, if he killed his victim or inflicted so much harm that the potential pregnancy was compromised. Once again, the evolutionary logic seems to predict reality. Rapists seldom engage in gratuitous violence; instead, they usually limit themselves to the force required to subdue or control their victims. A survey by one of us (Palmer), of volunteers at rape crisis centers, found that only 15 percent of the victims whom the volunteers had encountered reported having been beaten in excess of what was needed to accomplish the rape. And in a 1979 study of 1,401 rape victims, a team led by the sociologist Thomas W. McCahill found that most of the victims reported being pushed or held, but that acts of gratuitous violence, such as beating, slapping or choking, were reported in only a minority of the rapes — 22 percent or less.

There were two other interesting results in the present study. First, regardless of the experimental group, BMI appeared to be the more important predictor of perceived attractiveness, health and fertility. This is consistent with much recent work on the issue of the relative importance of BMI and WHR to judgements of women’s attractiveness and health (e.g. Fan et al., 2004; Swami & Tove´e, 2005, 2007; Tove´e & Cornelissen, 2001; Tove´e et al., 1999, 2002, 2006). Our study adds to this body of work and suggests that, overall, BMI may act as the ﬁrst-pass cue of women’s attractiveness rather than WHR (cf., Voracek & Fisher, 2006).

This one seems to suggest that there is a difference between static and moving images. (At least, to me.)

Not everyone is unkind enough to hook their subjects up to a penile plethysmographs, you pervert.

You know about the symmetry studies because your picture of the attractive/unattractive cg woman was taken from the same page I worked off of.

Also, the provider (re: woman hooking up with hottie) could be her kin group. After all, they can’t shag her. We know what happens with repeated sibling/first cousin marriages. (The Ptolemies, for one.)

Oh, and here’s one more abstract, saying that euro men prefer women based on BMI, that brits. don’t care about WHR, but that Spanish and Portuguese subjects do:

I’ll get back to you about the ever-shrinking actress, so I can find a good source.

Oh, but re: anorexia and staying slender for reproductive purposes–for most of human history all of us have had to work hard to have enough weight on us to ovulate, let alone be pregnant and lactate. Sure, extreme obesity can mess with the hormones, but I don’t think self-starving has a long evolutionary history. Heck, women in my grandmother’s generation were thinner and shorter because of inadequate nutrition.

Oh, and I call shenanigans on colorism. Don’t buy the white supremacist hype.

Since we are talking about feminist lies and rape, it should be said that rape is always about sex, never about power. In fact, essentially only young fertile women are raped. Rape of prepubescent girls and women over 35 happens very rarely. Most rapes happen in the 13-35 year old age group, and within even this group most rapes concentrate on the 14-25 year old age range. Through rape statistics it’s posible to conclude what age group most men considers the most attractive and fertile.

Rape-as-power has to do with indirectly getting at the men associated with the female victim — her man, father, brothers, kinsmen. This is usually seen in wartime or when the rape crosses ethnic or racial lines.

It’s not that I have a problem with disputing the canard that “rape is about power, not sex” — if that’s true, then you could just as easily say that murder is about power, not killing — but juxtaposed with your apparent obsession with young adolescents, it’s unsettling.

Saying that my comments are creepy does not disprove them.
I believe that rape is inmoral and should be criminally persecuted, however the age of the rape victims are a good indication of men’s raw sexual preferences. Most young men below 30, and definitively below 25 (THE AGE OF MOST RAPISTS) are attracted to young women in their middteens. The fact that beauty peagants (see DUSK IN AUTUMN) have to ban 16 and 17 year old women from participating and winning tells a lot about the middleaged jurors also.

“what distinguishes a feminist from a traditional woman is not whether she disagrees with how men view the world, but rather her inability to agree to disagree.”

It’s disorienting to read that quote, and look over this, and other, threads. None of the feminists here have suggested that disagreement with their opinion could be caused or linked to ugliness or menstruation. There are intolerant assholes all over, in all groups. It’s simply not the most important or noticeable or prevalant characteristic of a feminist.

And it’s pretty intolerant to try to pretend that a narrow mind could be the exclusive and defining trait of one group.

Since we are talking about feminist lies and rape, it should be said that rape is always about sex, never about power. In fact, essentially only young fertile women are raped. Rape of prepubescent girls and women over 35 happens very rarely. Most rapes happen in the 13-35 year old age group, and within even this group most rapes concentrate on the 14-25 year old age range. Through rape statistics it’s posible to conclude what age group most men considers the most attractive and fertile.

Many rapes are date-rape situations, and because younger women are more likely to be single and in the dating market it pretty much follows that the average age of rape victims will be relatively young. If you looked at the statistics for rapes committed by strangers, it’s quite likely that the average age of victims would be somewhat older.

No. They’re not. 80 year old women, coma victims and, oh yeah, prepubescent children (!) are quite often victims. C’mon dude. Read a newspaper at least before you try to reframe the world to support your narrow views.

I never said that rapes of menopausic women and children don´t happen. Of course they do. However, they happen very rarely. That is why they are news by the way. News are by definition rare events. And no Peter you are wrong, check out any rape statistics and you will see that my numbers are right.

No. They are not rare events. It’s generally accepted that between 20 and 35 percent of children will experience molestation. And rape is a widely-known risk factor in long-term care facilities. You should know this.

Dizzy and Peter, I think the general trend in rape statistics is as Gannon says. I have seen the figures he cites. I know there are marginal cases where old women and little children are raped, but these are relative rarities, though they are by no means unknown.

What I would question about his comment is using rape statistics to prove that rape is purely sexual. I no more believe that than I believe that rape is purely a crime of violence. There is an element of rage in rape; it is a violent crime, after all, and one of the signs doctors and police use to distinguish rape from consensual sex is the degree of bruising and tearing around the external genitalia of the victim. A rapist is not merely a man who wants sex; he is an angry man who wants sex, a man who is aroused by the resistance and pain of his victims.

It does a disservice to men and to human sexuality in general to suggest that rapists are merely men whose sexual hunger got the better of them. Gannon didn’t actually say this, but it would be easy for some readers to take away the impression that this was what he meant.

Before people here start crucifying me I want to say that rape is a crime and should be punished, however not too strong as to create incentives to murder the rape victim. So jail sentences should be around 5 to 15 years, according to the circumstances. Sure that some rapists enjoy watching the fear in the eyes of their victim and the power they experience. However, 90 percent of victims are young, rather attractive females, which suggests that the main reason for rape is getting sexual access to females the rapist otherwise couln’t get. Also, most rapists are young men under 35 whose self control was overridden by their raging testosterone. All this indicates me it’s essentially about sex.
In fact, here we have an excellent argument in favor of prostitution. Prostitution gives every men a chance to blow off his sexual energy instead of raping honorable women. Prohibitions of prostitution usually go hand in hand with increases of rape.

M Bradewell, thanks for the link. As always, it was interesting. I’ve seen a few American studies that show that female adolescents have similar reactions to their bodies after watching a ton of soap operas, or reading a lot of print media, but I sort of discounted them as they were focused on adolescents and not adults (my reasoning being that the mindset of an adolesent is more fragile and easily affected than that of an adult, so you can’t extrapolate the results to apply to adults). I wish I didn’t have to pay for this article, because I’m curious to see what ages the participants were and what sort of TV they watched (whether it was mainly German-made TV, or if they watched American programs dubbed in German).

And, to jump in on your rape discussion, according to RAINN, 80% of women raped are under 30, and 44% are under 18. The National Crime Victimization Study shows that a whopping 73% of sexual assaults are perpetrated by people that the victim knows – 38% of perpetrators were a friend or acquaintance of the victim, 28% were an intimate and 7% were another relative – so I don’t think it’s an issue of access to the person. I mean, 28% of the cases are where the person has sexual activity with the victim already!

Then again, it is estimated that only about 38% of rapes are reported to the police… so who knows what the real statistics would say.

Gannon, the only way your statistics work is if child molestation is defined as a separate crime from rape. And honestly, I don’t know why you’re being so insistent on this point. You’re obviously, clearly, wrong. Children are raped all the time. It’s depressingly common. We just call it “molestation” instead of rape. And Peter, yes, children are left alone and they get raped.

You guys seem to think of rape as a stranger crime. It’s not. Its’ sexual violation. It can happen between acquaintances, spouses, whatever.

No one says that rape is only a stranger crime. What component involves people who know each other, I don’t know. My guess is that when the victim is older than a child, actual violent rape by “acquaintances, spouses, whatever” is rare, and intoxicants are likely to be involved.

My concern is that as with “date rape,” there are some who are politically invested in re-defining repe so vaguely that practically any situation could be described as one.

This is actually as I’ve always suspected. A girl who sees more instances of beautiful women on screen who remind her of herself will raise her self-image. Conversely, if a girl doesn’t see many images of such, she will feel worse about herself. I noticed that after I stopped watching TV, I started feeling much more confident.

I rarely see Asian American females portrayed in leading roles in American mainstream media, so like many other Asian Americans I often prefer manga, anime and Asian pop cultural icons, where Asians do take leading roles. In video games I tend to choose characters that more or less resemble me; whenever possible, I always play female characters with long and dark straight hair.

the main reason for rape is getting sexual access to females the rapist otherwise couln’t get

This is why some believe it has an evolutionary basis. Women’s ovulation concealment has always thought to be an adaptation to increase her mate selection abilities, but the flip side of this is if women displayed ovulation like other animals, then their choices would have not played a role at all — in other words rape would invalidate her choice. Female ducks are evolving elaborate ways to counter rape, with spiraling reproductive tracts and ways to block out unwanted sperm.

Prohibitions of prostitution usually go hand in hand with increases of rape.

In Nevada, where prostitution has been legalized, the rape rates are the 4th highest in the U.S. 95% of prostituted women share their money with/relinquish it to a pimp, so even legalized prostitution is not lucrative business for a woman.

In Amsterdam, 80% of prostitutes are foreigners, and 70% have no immigration papers. Holland’s prostitutes are unionized, but only women with EU documents are able to get permits to work as legal prostitutes. The illegal ones have no protections.

I wouldn’t be so fast to say correlation can be interpreted as causation (rape vis-a-vis prostitution). It could be that a more liberal atmosphere in the modern western hemisphere makes for more acceptance of consensual sexual relations between men and women, and less need for rape in general.

One other thing to keep in mind is that rape stats. also vary by marital status and race. Black women are more likely to be raped. (And Native women are much more likely to be raped.)

If you really want to know if it is about sex or power, you would have to study the rapists. I’ve often read that many rapists can’t even maintain an erection. Which way does that cut? Plus, there are different types of rapists, ones who get off on the woman fighting back, and ones who want her to pretend that she likes him. (And ones that drug them into a stupor with roofies.)

Also, re: age, think of who is likely to be out in the public arena, meeting new people. Having a husband can be the anti-rape.

From table 11, (yes, I see the little stars, but look at the last 10 years of NCVSs to verify the overall trend), we can see that women who were never married or divorced are the most frequent victims, while married or widowed women are four to six times less likely to be raped.

Looking at marital status (same link), only 24% of never married women, 24% of married women, 100% of widowed women (duh) and 32% of divorced women were raped or sexually assaulted by strangers. See Table 31. (Yes, again with the stars, look at 10 years of data if you want.)

For rape and sexual assault of men and women (so, mostly women) 31.3% were victimized by someone “well known” to them, 29.1% were victimized by a casual acquaintance, 2.8% were in the category “don’t know relationship” (not clear who doesn’t know, vic. or person giving survey), and 31.4% were victimized by strangers. Table 34, second table.

So, it is not the stranger in the bushes. Although he is more likely to be reported.

Look Dizzy, I don’t really know much about child molestation.
It’s a very serious crime, but from what I know from Argentina, it’s a rather uncommon crime. However, I would like to point out that I don’t consider statutory rape child molestation, and that 14 year old girls defintively can consent.

“So… how many men are raped in prison? And from the few episodes I caught of his show, I think it’s pretty clear Trump has quite the hard-on for the firing process.”

Dizzy, you’re not a man, so it would behoove you NOT to guess how men think or feel — and what their motives are. Men, as you know, have prostate glands that fill and fill and fill with ejaculatory fluid. A prostate exam can often tell how recently a man ejaculated by how “boggy” the gland is. When the prostant is swollen and sperm fill the testes, men get to the stage where we have erections almost all the time, until we get some release.

How many men here have attempted to go weeks without some release and found they can’t think of anything but sex because their bodies won’t let them?

Feminists seem to mock this, but unless you’ve felt it, don’t discount it. Needing ejaculatory release is almost like needing to go to the bathroom, to put it crudely.

At the same time, men don’t get the constant compliments women do and therefore don’t have the instant option of having physical companionship at a whim. The idea of never getting any human contact is something females almost never have to face (except in old age).

If you put these two things together and lock two men up together, the need for release and some human contact make sexual contact inevitable. Notice I didn’t say “rape” — because often in these situations there is some implicit consent.

I agree with feminists that since men can’t get pregnant, they shouldn’t judge abortion. But at the same time, women don’t have men’s biology either; therefore, you should not try and imagine a motive for either prison sex or rape.

And, guys, if you’d quit har-har-ing about this topic, maybe we could stop the feminists from repeating the (non scientific) lie that rape is “about power.”

I have never heard a feminist mock a man’s need for a release, unless the man tries to use that to get her into bed. But that is something that is mocked in general, because I don’t know a single woman who has had a man pull that line on her.

It’s all about the M-word, my friends. That’s why I think the anti-masturbation trend in some Christian circles is so troubling.

You don’t think prison rape is used to solidify power or humiliate men? For reals? What about rape of other men in war? Did you know that some male burglars rape their male victims in order to prevent them from reporting the robbery? It works.

I don’t judge people for engaging in sex, for whatever reason. I do judge people for raping, or for giving rapists a pass, whether their victims are men, women, or children.

Oh, and Gannon, I agree. (Didn’t think I’d say that.)

I don’t think statutory rape laws make sense (unless the victim is twelve or below.) Above that age, I think that a significant age gap can create a power gap between the parties, such that consent was not meaningfully given, but I think that should be proven, not assumed. I’ve known fourteen-year-old girls who were more mature than their sixteen-year-old boyfriends, and in California, both could be convicted of statutory rape. Although they usually only prosecute the boy. Even if the girl is older.

“the rare rape of a granny does not disprove the fact that rape is an evolutionary counterstrategy by omega males to replicate their dna.”

I remember Half-Sigma saying that was a canard, and that most rapists fit the testosterone-flushed thuggo profile. It’s the memorably weird “omegas” like the guy that killed Kitty Genovese that inform collective imagination, but they don’t really rack up the numbers.

Plus, there are a lot of different contexts for rape historically and evolutionarily. We call rape of a wife, ambush-rape, war-rape, etc. the same thing even though they all have pretty different evolutionary implications.

M Bradwell said:
“You don’t think prison rape is used to solidify power or humiliate men? For reals? ”

I will concede there are some situations where power is an issue. BUT — power can’t be the only issue because men need to be aroused to have sex. Men feel power in lots of situations — I can assure you we’re not ready to ejaculate in most of them.

I agree with Clio that there are some men aroused by women resisting them. Hence the popularity of “porn rape” or whatever it’s called.

But that is something that is mocked in general, because I don’t know a single woman who has had a man pull that line on her.

It happened to me more than once when I was 15. Then again, my 17 year old boyfriend at the time admitted to me (or maybe bragged to me) that he had sociopathic tendencies and was a chronic liar. He used a lot of such maneuvers on me, including “blue balls are so horrible,” and I didn’t know any better.

Really, it could have happened at any age to an inexperienced person. He also preyed on my insecurities and made me believe he was in love with me (he may well have been; I’m not totally sure), so he made me feel guilty for not wanting to be with him.

men don’t get the constant compliments women do and therefore don’t have the instant option of having physical companionship at a whim.

Women are a lot more forward nowadays. I was told a real story last night about how a pretty secretary girl told a guy who was fixing something under her desk, “Don’t look up my skirt while you’re down there… on second thought, I don’t mind if you do.” Tall, attractive men get a ton of attention and compliments from women around them, and I see it firsthand.

The problems you speak of are found mainly in Clark (Las Vegas) and Washoe (Reno/Sparks) Counties, where it is not.

They are also counties with higher populations (these counties have over 400,000 people, which is why brothels are illegal there). Crime is almost always higher in urban areas with higher population density. The fact that people in those counties can easily travel to nearby counties where prostitution is legal should mitigate some of the effect of “not being to get any,” no? Unless people simply stay put there and never move across county borders.

Prostitution is not really a good solution (especially not to the problem of rape) in my opinion. 81% of the women in the Nevada legal brothels want to escape prostitution. It’s not a good life for them, even though they probably have it better than prostitutes in third world countries where prostitution is legal. As far as medical needs go, men can already masturbate, which relieves the pressure on prostate glands that fill ejaculatory fluid.

Also, I find it unlikely that men who would otherwise frequent prostitutes would necessarily turn to rape in the absence of prostitutes. I would give these men the benefit of the doubt, because I do know of guys who would call up girls on sex phone lines and have been to brothels in Nevada. Nevertheless, they didn’t seem like rapists.

“Notice I didn’t say “rape” — because often in these situations there is some implicit consent.”

You don’t know what you’re talking about. And it is outrageous for you to determine, based on no evidence whatsoever, that the rapes some men experience must be at leasta little bit consensual.

I don’t know why you guys are so insistent on this only-pretty-women-are-REALLY-raped point, but it’s scary. Men are raped (and it IS rape). Children are raped. Old women are raped. Coma victims are raped.

It happens. And it has nothing to do with attraction or the “need for release.”

Oh, and I’m sure that need is real (please don’t imagine you’re the only sex who needs sex). But there is this thing called masturbation. And from what I’ve heard, prisoners are expert practitioners. Also, as you mentioned, a consensual arrangement could be had.

Even if there is a lot of consensual sexual contact between men in prison, that does not mean that there is less prison rape.

Based on what you meant when you said “these situations” (i.e., situations labeled as rape vs. situations of sexual contact in prison) what you said could be construed as calling people who said they did not consent liars.

Being women, you both are incapable of understanding male sexuality. And my guess is that both of you are pampered American feminists who have never been near a prison. So, this discussion is beyond the both of you.

The cliche charge of “calling people liars” is a feminist tactic used to supposedly prove all men are rapists at heart. Nice try.

However, I think you guys at least deserve points for giving a damn about men’s prison rape to begin with. Most feminists and women won’t even acknowledge this situation happens.

About defining feminism, JK: the reason I, although certainly a believer in women’s rights, no longer call myself a feminist is that it came to mean much more than you say it does. First, I’m very “pro-life”, so feminists don’t want me. I know there’s a group called “feminists for life”, but the actress Patricia Heaton, for one, has taken a lot of flack for belonging to it. And though I tried to hold on for some time in spite of feminists’ attitude to women like me, I finally gave up in the late 80s, when some of the more extreme, McKinnon-influenced feminists began to argue that all men were potential rapists.

I was particularly upset in 1989 when, after the tech school shooting of a class of female engineers in Montreal, a whole series of feminist interviewees said that they thought this was just the usual continuum of male violence to women, starting with pornography and ending with murder. “I’m done with the label”, I muttered to myself. It was too open to misuse and misunderstanding.

I’m not capable of understanding anyone else’s sexuality, except for the extent they explain it to me.

That is why talking about experience is important–and recognizing that there is a lot of variety. There is no unitary “male” or “female” sexuality. I’ve had some really interesting conversations with male friends and boyfriends when we start discussing the specifics–startling overlaps and even more startling “I didn’t know thats.” But I’ve also learned from talking to female friends that our sexual experiences (what we like, how things feel, etc.) can be vastly different.

Re: sexual assault, in my experience, feminists (like me) tend to be much better educated about sexual assault, and as a result, much more knowledgeable about the men who suffer it than the average person.

For example, did you know that 6-8% of victims (based on self-report) on average are male? Or that 2-3% of offenders are female? That men, like women, are more likely to be assaulted by acquaintances than strangers? That in general, men are victimized by strangers when it comes to violent crimes and women by nonstrangers? (These numbers, taken from the NCVS, are somewhat problematic b/c they survey persons 12 and older about what happened to them in the past year. So it includes some molest cases. But still.)

If one of the two men says it is rape, and no motive for lying can be proven, I say it is rape. (And yes, I do recognize innocent until proven guilty and all that, but when somebody says their car was stolen, we don’t presume that it wasn’t. It is still possible that the assailant, or car thief, could have reasonably believed that they were not raping/stealing a car.)

I stick with the feminist label, and I do consider it nothing more nor less than: all people are equal.

As a feminist, statements such as, “Women are so stupid and prone to being manipulated by their emotions…” are offensive to me. But I would be equally offended if they were applied to men.

And Dennis, now you’re just asserting that it’s mostly pretty women who are raped – a claim we’ve already clearly debunked – and your claim is based on NOTHING. No new information. No analysis of the facts presented. Just a few slurs about how women like me “must” think, because “you” said so.

My mom is strongly pro-life (and Catholic) so I think I understand where you’re coming from. I do think it is silly to say that pro-life women can’t be feminists, b/c if you think life begins at conception or implantation, you just do.

BTW, the “all men are rapists/all heterosexual sex is rape” statements have often been attributed to MacKinnon, although she never said them.

Re: the continuum of violence, I don’t think that argument is entirely out of whack. Less respected/less powerful groups are more likely to be the victims of violent crimes, and less likely to have those crimes prosecuted. Since women’s status has risen in the U.S., we’ve been doing much better with DV and sexual assault. Since the civil rights movement, we’ve gotten better, (although we still aren’t great) at prosecuting crimes where African-Americans are the victim. (But race of the victim is still the biggest predictor of sentences in murder cases.)

Men who tend to think that violence against women is okay, and who actually commit it, tend to fit a certain profile–that is, they have very essentialist views about male and female roles. Now that does not mean that all men who believe in male/female differences are violent, in fact, I think that some men I’ve known who are traditionalists would never hit a woman. Never ever, not even to keep himself from getting hit. But that is the difference between people who think the sexes are different but deserving of equal respect, and those who don’t.

Re: MacKinnon opened herself to a good deal of misunderstanding by her intemperate language. But yes, I understand she never said that in so many words. That’s why I wrote “MacKinnon-influenced” rather than “MacKinnon-quoting”.

As for the idea that “essentialist” views of male/female relations are statistically linked with violence towards women in men: I think it’s a very shaky correlation rather than evidence of a causal connection, however rare a one.

Finally, one aspect of the Montreal shootings that I didn’t understand until years later, because the papers downplayed it: the class was a mixed class, full of men and women. The gunman cleared the men out first, and then shot the women. Not one of the men tried to organize a group effort to disarm the man, or even to call for help once they had got out of the room. It wasn’t like the Virginia shootings last spring, in which the earlier victims had no time to think before the killing started. There are some good things to be said about “essentialist” men – who might have been expected to be a little less passive. That’s one reason why I turned away from feminism.

the proof that rape is about sex is in the boner. wood doesn’t lie.
if it were about power as feminists wish it were then donald trump would get a bulge in his pants every time he fired someone.

btw, the predominant age of rape victims is in their prime fertile years, and, yes, that can go as low as 12 in many girls who are well-developed with sexual secondary characteristics. the rare rape of a granny does not disprove the fact that rape is an evolutionary counterstrategy by omega males to replicate their dna.

Um, that may explain why some male rapists have difficulty ejaculating.

Also, a little friction gets a boner going just fine.

In fact, many straight male victims of molestation/sexual assault become confused about their sexuality because being penetrated (I am trying to be delicate, here) stimulates the prostate and can create an erection even though the man is utterly disgusted by what is happening to him. So they start to wonder if they really wanted it, etc.

If anyone out there who this happened to is reading it, no, you didn’t want it.

To all concerned: many men, if I can go by what they tell me, suffer from raging testosterone at some or all points of their youth. Many of these do not have much access to women who are not their primary relatives. They may get, er, “boners”, at all kinds of awkward moments; many experience this phenomenon on dates, in the presence of women who have said no to sex. Still, the majority of such men do not commit rape.

I, at any rate, never said that rape was about power; I said it was about violence – violence and sex together. I’m not trying to leave the sex part out of the discussion. I think rapists are angry men who get turned on by resistance on the part of their victims.

One statistic I haven’t encountered is how many rapists are in fact married men, or men with girlfriends, but that might be more telling than the number of men who rape women in their prime fertile years, as an indication of how much rape has to do with not having access to sex.

“Do you really believe that men who believe in treating women with respect would be passive toward violent acts against women? If so, then I can see why you turned away from feminism. On the other hand, many cultures in which feminism does not have any foothold are violent toward women and tolerate it to a much greater extent.”

Well, Hope, you seem to have read both more and less into my comment than was actually there. In fact, your response is a tribute – forgive me – to the lack of historical education that recent university students receive. You appear to believe that someone who is critical of feminism must be critical of the West; you also appear to believe that only feminism brought women any kind of respect from men. Neither of these views is true, and if you have been taught that they are, your instructors have failed you. In any case, I don’t reject feminism altogether; I just think it developed some very odd kinks at the close of the 20th century.

I should point out, too, that I was taking issue with an earlier comment that suggested there was a statistical link between being an essentialist (i.e. WRT the differences between the sexes) and being violent towards women. I wanted to suggest that in the old essentialist view, men at least believed it was their duty to protect women.

I do try to take a broad view, but usually in the context of Western history. And in Western history, men were more “chivalrous” towards women before the mid-20th century than after it. The men on the Titanic gave up their chance to get into the lifeboats so that women and children could get on first. But when the Titanic film appeared in the mid-90s (I honestly don’t remember the year), many younger men were apparently puzzled about why anyone would do something like that.

In the case I mentioned in Montreal, it was the passivity of the men rather than their lack of chivalry that I was lamenting. If a crazed gunman sent all the women out of a room in order to shoot the men, I might not (realistically) try to tackle him, but I would certainly call for help. The male students in that classroom simply left the room, and did nothing afterwards.

Of course I don’t think that respect between the sexes has to imply any lack of chivalry on men’s part. In this case, however, I suspect the men had been brought up not to take risks with their lives, in a fashion that was once not considered worthy of respect in men. Incidentally, I don’t think that these men were necessarily typical of all young men of our age.

Yeah Dennis, your words are ambiguous. And if you meant, as you claim now, that both events happen in prison, your point is a surious tautology adding nothing to the discussion (as M Bradwell pointed out).

Also it’s news to me that he gets “frustrated” by anything but his own inability to make a coherent statement, instead of some cobbled together mush of “Women are dumb and easy to manipulate. Except the ones who suck. And they all want me. Except the bitches who suck. Because they’re ugly or old or menstruating or crazy (proof being, of course, their lack of desire). But the good women are great. As long as they are nice to me. At least until they get fat. Bitches.”

strawman.
there is some overlap, but it’s not to the degree feminists think it is and it isn’t a steady continuum, more like a region of outliers. most women’s brains are wired differently than most men’s brains.

bradwell again: Umm, I wasn’t saying there was a unitary human sexuality, either. I was saying there is a lot of variation in what gets individual men and women’s rocks off.

Me: I’ve had some really interesting conversations with male friends and boyfriends when we start discussing the specifics–startling overlaps and even more startling “I didn’t know thats.”

oh christ, sounds like you date some real nancyboys if they are willing to suck up to your equalitarian blathering.

Me again: Men who like to talk to women about sex (particularly if they are sleeping with them) are nancyboys?

So you learn to please your partners by talking to men? Great strategy.

You: the point is that lust is a necessary component to any sexual action. no boner can live without it. so now we are arguing about what other feelings instigate a sexual action and in what ratios they are present. speaking as a man who has far more experience with this than you ever will, the answer is… sexual urgency is pretty much the whole kit and caboodle.
and the rape victim demographics prove this.

No. Many of you can keep a stiffy with friction, prostate stimulation, or fantasy. How else could you wank, darling?

How have you explained that straight men rape men, again?

Re: fighting–I meant a sexual struggle.

Also, re: victims, rapists often begin with older, weaker targets, and then switch over to their age group. Also, see my above analysis about the marital status of victims.

Why do you want to put cuffs around men’s penises? Whatever floats your boat, sugar. Do you have any studies of starving men sporting wood at the sight of slender

And no, BMI is not a proxy for WHR, they did regression analyses. Also, many models don’t have a 0.7 WHR, because they’re thinner than they would otherwise be. That’s why the Victoria’s Secrets gals pop a hip and arch their backs, to mimic that WHR. And they have way prettier bodies than my 0.7 WHR figure, lemme tell you.

Do you think men put more emphasis on facial features or WHR?

Re: rapists–the ones that do ejaculate often have girlfriends. The ones that don’t, don’t. So you are analyzing normal male sexuality based on the deviant sexual behavior of a subclass of men who have difficulty performing.

in the old essentialist view, men at least believed it was their duty to protect women.

I know that some men still believe that it is their duty to protect women. I suspect part of the reason why I first fell in love with a guy years ago was because he told me that he put a man in the hospital with multiple skull fractures because that man physically abused a girl he knew. He never slept with her, but he felt very protective of her. When he saw her beaten, he simply could not sit by and let it go unpunished, since she was not going to the cops.

You appear to believe that someone who is critical of feminism must be critical of the West; you also appear to believe that only feminism brought women any kind of respect from men.

I do not believe either of these things. I admire western feminism for all that it encompasses, and postmodern feminism has more to do with race and class than gender anyway. I never said that feminism is flawless or that to be critical of it means one is critical of western culture in general. I also do not believe that modern feminism is 100% responsible for the phenomenon we observe today — that men in the west treat women better than men elsewhere in the world. Indeed, that’s why I named the old knight chivalry traditions, which modern feminism often rejects.

I suspect the men had been brought up not to take risks with their lives, in a fashion that was once not considered worthy of respect in men.

This has far less to do with feminism and more to do with the gentrification of the west in general. Yes, my husband was fearless for his life and demanded respect through physical prowess. However, he grew up poor and had very little to lose — his regard for his own life was as low as society’s regard for him. University men and women were (at the time of the story you describe, at least) far more privileged than he was. The trend of the rich sending their sons to the military to become a “man” has been reversed — it’s now the poor doing all the fighting and to risk their lives to protect the weak.

I don’t blame you for believing feminism brought about some ills. But throughout history there have always been cowardly men, sans modern feminism. The only difference is that now, it’s acceptable to be a coward. Maybe you want to pin the blame on feminists, but I think it’s just misinterpreting the feminine fear of violence in general. By the way, the girl whose abusive boyfriend landed in the hospital was quite freaked out by the whole thing. I might have felt the same way, but I recognized instinctively that what my first love did was truly manly and incredibly chivalrous, and in my opinion, a real feminist would have applauded him like I did.

I wouldn’t blame those men too much. Even people with infantry or police training may freeze up the first time they’re faced with a situation like that. Since we haven’t been much of a frontier country from the 20th Century onwards, very few people have the experience with having to deal with hostiles pointing guns at them. (Except friends of mine who travel in rural-ass areas where there is still no law.) My grandfather was infantry, and his take was that you never knew how someone was going to turn out until they were in battle a few times. Even then, your crack buddy could lose his edge with no explanation.

Yes, but Hope, really, I didn’t begin by blaming feminism as such for men having become wimpy. In fact, if you look at my comment again, you’ll see I didn’t make any direct connection between the two at all.

I was responding to a comment that suggested that “masculinism” (if I can call it that – I mean essentialism with regard to the sexes) was responsible for men being violent. My entire initial comment was based on taking on that assumption. I doubt that I would have mentioned the issue of contemporary male passivity if not for that unfortunate remark, which exasperated me.

In fact, if you look at my comment again, you’ll see I didn’t make any direct connection between the two at all.

What you wrote was this:

There are some good things to be said about “essentialist” men – who might have been expected to be a little less passive. That’s one reason why I turned away from feminism.

I interpreted this to mean that you turned away from feminism because you think men who did not “believe” in feminism would be more protective of women. In my personal experience, men who hold more egalitarian views of male-female relations actually tend to be more likely to come to a woman’s aid in times of distress. Obviously my experience is not necessarily representative of the general trend, and I am biased toward feminism based on my past. But you did mention “essentialist” men, and I do know some…

My father and maternal grandfather — not related by blood — both come from a very misogynist culture, both mistreated their wives, and neither would have risked their own lives for a woman. They started families outside of their first wives. They believed that men are stronger, smarter and all around better than women — and treated their own women worse as a result of it.

My mother was not an overly ambitious careerist — she cooks and cleans well to this day. She was also very attractive in her youth (I saw pictures), but she fell in love with the wrong man. My father physically abused her, sent her to the emergency room in the U.S., and took her money when he divorced her in China (their laws were much more favorable toward men) rather than pay her alimony. No child support either, and he was a well-off doctor while she struggled as a nurse aide on minimum wage.

My husband is the diametric opposite — he has told me that he would give up his life if it would save mine. He was raised by a southern gentleman and became one himself. He has never lifted a finger to purposefully hurt a woman, and he would say that he “believes” in feminism — not the “all men are rapists” propaganda designed to make men feel guilty for being sexual creatures, but the kind that compels men to treat women well.

The men on the Titanic gave up their chance to get into the lifeboats so that women and children could get on first. But when the Titanic film appeared in the mid-90s (I honestly don’t remember the year), many younger men were apparently puzzled about why anyone would do something like that.

The film was released in 1997, when he was 20 — he never saw it, but he would not have been surprised at all by what the men did for their families. I have a feeling that he definitely would have tried to fight back in the Montreal class had he been there. He’d been shot at before. He told me that he knows just how violent men are, because he has also felt those violent impulses himself, and he knows they are necessary for survival.

Frankly, feminism may well be just a cultural method by which women try to ensure their own survival. However, they do still need men’s help. If contemporary feminists feel that they no longer need men, then that is regrettable. But it’s not as dire as that — a lot of feminists are married, too.

dizzy and hedonistic pulled the same pseudo argument out thier asses:So… how many men are raped in prison?

prison is an exceptional circumstance that has very little bearing on reality in the outside world. high-testosterone men who are deprived of women for years on end will turn their sexual energy to the next available thing — male ass.
with men, there is a power angle having to do with gang dynamics and prison codes, but prison rape is still predominately about sexual release.
or: if there were co-ed prisons how many rape victims would be women and how many would be men?

And from the few episodes I caught of his show, I think it’s pretty clear Trump has quite the hard-on for the firing process.

an adrenaline rush is not the same thing as an erection.
your capitulation in this argument is duly noted.

To me it means ensuring that women have the same respect and equality that men have.

You sound like a fine example of the American men who treat women with respect and chivalry, who believe that women are “equal” in status to men, and you probably engage in such simple gentlemanly gestures as holding a door for a woman, which I am guessing was not at all uncommon during the 1950s.

To contrast that, in Asia a man would have probably walked in front of a woman rather than besides her, and the woman would do her best to get of the man’s way whenever possible. It would not be odd for a woman to hold the door open for a man, particularly her husband.

Western men may joke about making women into their subordinates, but few of them truly believe that women are so inferior that they deserve no respect. Even he displays such western male traits of treating women well sexually and caring for her pleasure, etc. He has also written in the past about the notion of “romance,” something that a man in, for example, Saudi Arabia would scorn.

This is why I admire western feminism. For all their faults, men here simply treat women better compared to men in many developing and third world countries, and I think that to an extent, even the notion of “knights in shining armor protecting the weaker, fairer sex” is feminist in nature, as this idea was certainly not common in Asian cultures. Modern feminists will probably disagree with me, but this is my interpretation of western feminism — that it is, and always has been, about protecting women from rape, murder, and having their personal choices undermined.

There are some good things to be said about “essentialist” men – who might have been expected to be a little less passive. That’s one reason why I turned away from feminism.

Do you really believe that men who believe in treating women with respect would be passive toward violent acts against women? If so, then I can see why you turned away from feminism. On the other hand, many cultures in which feminism does not have any foothold are violent toward women and tolerate it to a much greater extent.

Personally, I prefer the western culture to a culture that is so misogynistic and so devoid of “feminism” that female babies are routinely murdered. I come from such a culture, and I am pretty sure that had my mother not intervened, my father’s family (which comes from a rural place) and my father himself would have abandoned me. In America (and Canada), except in the most ignorant areas of inbreeding, women are not systematically treated like excrement.

bradwell/hed/womens studies departments wrote:It isn’t a pseudo argument, it shows that sexual actions can be motivated by more than just lust.

the point is that lust is a necessary component to any sexual action. no boner can live without it. so now we are arguing about what other feelings instigate a sexual action and in what ratios they are present. speaking as a man who has far more experience with this than you ever will, the answer is… sexual urgency is pretty much the whole kit and caboodle.
and the rape victim demographics prove this.

Also, what about the fact that rapists are often sexually unsuccessful? What does that say about lust?

it doesn’t say what you think it says.
as long as the boner was initially present, lust was the catalyst. if he goes flaccid in the middle of the rape that could mean many things like:
1. his target was ugly up close (i’m not joking)
2. he suffers from clogged arteries
3. he was drugged up

physiologically, a man can often lose his hardon after an initial burst of horniness if he is out of shape, older, high, or in the middle of subduing an uncooperative female victim that tires him out mentally as well as physically.

Or that people can be aroused by fighting?

yeah, boxers get erections in the middle of bouts all the time. *rolls eyes*
if in the rare instances that this happens, the most likely explanation is that the physical contact with his package during the fight is what gave him a boner.
or, if he is fighting a woman, just grabbing her body, being near her, and feeling contact with her skin might be enough to arouse him.

You know, some people do have sex blindfolded. It is possible.

tactile stimulation is a lust instigator as long as the guy knew beforehand who he was sleeping with.
in gloryhole cases where he doesn’t know, the penis can often react with a mind of its own.

strawman.
there is some overlap, but it’s not to the degree feminists think it is and it isn’t a steady continuum, more like a region of outliers. most women’s brains are wired differently than most men’s brains.

I’ve had some really interesting conversations with male friends and boyfriends when we start discussing the specifics–startling overlaps and even more startling “I didn’t know thats.”

oh christ, sounds like you date some real nancyboys if they are willing to suck up to your equalitarian blathering.

tizzy:Also it’s news to me that he gets “frustrated” by anything but his own inability to make a coherent statement, instead of some cobbled together mush of “Women are dumb and easy to manipulate. Except the ones who suck. And they all want me. Except the bitches who suck. Because they’re ugly or old or menstruating or crazy (proof being, of course, their lack of desire). But the good women are great. As long as they are nice to me. At least until they get fat. Bitches.”

option 1: dismiss tizzy with a withering quip:

you should try reading for comprehension.

option 2: answer tizzy’s strawmen point by point until her blocklike skull gets dented from the facts:

one, show me where i wrote that all women are dumb and easily manipulated.
two, show me where i wrote that there are women who suck who are not easily manipulated.
three, show me where i wrote that all women want me (they do, but that is an assertion that will be hard to prove with the years i am given on this earth).
four, show me where i wrote that the women who don’t want me are all bitches who suck.
five, ugly and old and crazy girls will have a harder time in the dating market. this does not necessarily make them bitches, though failure with men will make it more likely that their attitudes will turn bitchy and spiteful. same is true of men.
six, when you get all hateful toward a man expressing his desire to sleep with hot girls or a man describing general differences between the sexes and the mechanisms of the dating market, i like to get under your skin by insinuating that you are on the rag. it seems to have worked.
seven, good women are great. i stand accused.
eight, if a women is nasty to me for no apparent reason, then she is not a good woman. if she is nasty for a reason, then i evaluate that reason and judge her accordingly.
nine, fat women will suffer negative consequences in the dating market. that does not mean a fat woman can’t be my friend or that she must have a bad personality.

now do you see why i answer your insipid retorts with withering quips? it’s because you are a dumbass.

btw, bradwell, all those links you posted purporting to show that men don’t care for WHR as an indicator of femininity really don’t say that. in many of them, BMI is simply acting as a proxy for WHR. a good BMI is usually accompanied by a good WHR, plus or minus 0.5. nothing in those links shows any evidence of men prefering women who deviate markedly from the 0.7 WHR universal standard.

in fact, a lot of those links show that men like skinny women, and the lower the BMI the better.

as for the theory of starving guys liking fatter women, i again ask you to show me a study that used penile plethysmograph readings in reaching its conclusions. because that is the only thing that will get at the truth.

Now you’re just trying to set little tasks which, once I accomplish (which can be done with google, you dork) you will then either ignore or dismiss or twist to pretend I said something else which will give you the opportunity to tell us even more about how feminists (in your HEAD and nowhere else) think. I don’t have to show you shit. You have a blog. It’s there. And most people on this board are here because they agree.
So why don’t you show me that you realize you’ve sputtered to a dead end with your crap, and get back to telling us about the women who loooove you. (And they would confirm it, but they don’t really speak English very well…)

Oh, and a few of his greatest hits, just to call bullshit on his attempt at, “Who me? I said THAT? You must have misunderstood because you get a period.”

On “Neg Hits”: “The objective is not to lower the self-esteem of the girl but raise the value of the player relative to her and therefore make her lower her bitch shield and become more pliable for conversation. ” So that’s the NICE way to put it? “It’s not that you totally suck it’s just that I’m better than you, bitch…” And you DO know that every woman who opts not to talk to you does not thereby automatically confirm her status as a “bitch,” right? Oh shit. You don’t. Do you?

i have a theory that female business school and law school grads have more circulating testosterone than the average woman.” Really? The smart women don’t stick around for your crap? But it’s because they have hairy arms (which you literally said several times and accused me of having). Yes. The women who make it through more than a community college leave you/pre-reject you because they’re just…. unnatural. (Don’t you have a long thing about how demanding and active smart women are in bed, too? Could there be a connection here?)

“Guys have many more compensatory qualities they can bring to the table to neutralize the disadvantage of being fat, whereas fat women, no matter how well cultivated their other attributes, cannot win over the men they want without lowering their standards to the basement or accepting a life of constant pump and dumps from players on the prowl for easy noncommital sex.” Yeah, don’t think you can pander to the winners on this board with your personality or accomplisments ladies. Because all you have to offer is your number one asset, if it’s up to par. And your looks. And your compliance with his demands. And wait, what else? Kids don’t count, he wants “a mandatory paternity test for every birth.” And he hates it when the American woman’s “Ass spreads from popping out” some poor put-upon man’s babies. (Which, once he leaves her for a hot 20-something secretary, she will then unreasonably expect him to support). Poor men.

They need you to give them hope. Get off this “Dizzy you suck” thing. It’s not really doing anything for your board. And I don’t care. But your boys, they care. Look at Gannon. He wants to date 12 year olds. He needs you to inspire him. Look at Nullpointer. He sucked in high school. He needs your guideance. They all need you to be you. And this fighting is not you. Give it up.

Because you’re down to renaming me “tizzy.” Repeatedly. Like that’s smart or something. No one wants to watch this!

No, I agree that the way I worded it was unfortunate. But really, as I said, I was trying to answer a previous post, and what I thought was a tendency to equate traditionalism (of the European kind) with violence towards women. But you appear in some of your comments to equate the chivalrous tradition with feminism, while the feminism I first encountered as a child in the early 1970s (when it first came to the fore as a political ideology), rejected chivalry and suggested that it was patronizing to women, demeaning, and ultimately dangerous, because it assumed women were helpless.

When M Bradwell (I think it was) made her point about the dangers of essentialism and violence towards women, I connected her idea with that particular variety of feminism.

Certainly I have some knowledge of other non-Western cultures, and I know that most of them have no chivalrous tradition towards women. I actually raised this point with him about this once, on another blog, where he had made the suggestion that men in general do most of the dangerous work in the world. It’s true in the West, and has been for (at least) several centuries, but it has seldom been true anywhere else.

Incidentally, it was Christianity that first took on, and defeated, the long-established Roman custom of female infanticide. Roman fathers had the power of life or death over their infants of both sexes, but it’s my understanding that female infants were much more likely to be “exposed” to die than male ones.

hope:In my personal experience, men who hold more egalitarian views of male-female relations actually tend to be more likely to come to a woman’s aid in times of distress.

i suspect it is dumber, high testosterone guys who are the most likely to white knight for a woman or pull her from a burning building. whether these sorts of guys (think drill sergeants and bikers) are more egalitarian in their views of male-female relations is open to debate. from what i’ve seen, they are not, though their traditionalism is tempered by their unexamined belief in the prevailing platitudes of early phase feminism, like equal job opportunity and “equal pay”.

My father and maternal grandfather — not related by blood — both come from a very misogynist culture, both mistreated their wives, and neither would have risked their own lives for a woman.

that’s interestiing hope. in american culture, it’s usually the nerds or the nihilistic smart guys who would balk at throwing away their own lives for a woman. perhaps the discrepancy in our observations has to do with a racial or cultural difference in your native china?

My husband is the diametric opposite — he has told me that he would give up his life if it would save mine.

to be fair, what husband wouldn’t say this?

“believes” in feminism — not the “all men are rapists” propaganda designed to make men feel guilty for being sexual creatures, but the kind that compels men to treat women well.

hope, there is no variety of modern feminism that compels men to treat women well.
in fact, just the opposite.
chivalry has never paid so poorly as it does now for men, and defiance of the chivalrous impulse has never paid so well.

Frankly, feminism may well be just a cultural method by which women try to ensure their own survival.

good insight. feminism is best viewed as a collective accumulation of power for women, advocated by individual women leaders with real reasons to be spiteful for their low standing in the sexual market, that tilts the mating playing field in their favor.
no fault divorce, financial independence, feminization of early education, date rape hysteria, glass ceiling speciousness, quotas, sensitivity classes, and total rejection of biological underpinnings to sex differences plus a demonization of masculine desire all add up to an attempt to make it easier for women to get what they want in the highest stakes game of dna transmittal and harder for the average man to do the same.
ironically, alpha males have benefited the most from this arrangement. i can’t complain.

The cognitive dissonance from trying to read through:
– The random attempts at “This is what feminists say!” (even though no one on this board says anything like what you claim)
– The easily-disproved falsities (For example, there is NO data on the attractiveness of female rape victims, and rich men actually father fewer children, they just work harder at protecting the legitimacy and lineage of their offspring)
– The repeated comments about physical traits, like anyone cares.
– The insistence that your own personal sexual preferences matter to anyone but you. (Feminists don’t give a damn what you want to sleep with. We just don’t want to be bothered by your attempts to break the “bitch shield” you think we don’t mean when we try to go out in public).
-Tortured reframings of things you’ve already said, to make yourself look, maybe a little less bad.
– And stupid and unproductive attempts to make us prove that you’ve said the things you say. (It’s a blog, everyone has read your stuff for a while, and most people are here because they agree).

I think your base is bored with all this. And the only reason you’re still posting, that I can see, would have to be the shaky hope that no one will bother reading the long threads. Because you look pretty bad here.

dizzy hyperventilated:On “Neg Hits”: “The objective is not to lower the self-esteem of the girl but raise the value of the player relative to her and therefore make her lower her bitch shield and become more pliable for conversation. ” So that’s the NICE way to put it? “It’s not that you totally suck it’s just that I’m better than you, bitch…”

women are sexually drawn to higher status men than themselves. if you’ve got a problem with this, take it up with the unfathomable cosmos.

And you DO know that every woman who opts not to talk to you does not thereby automatically confirm her status as a “bitch,” right?

you’ve been hurt by a lot of guys in your life, haven’t you?

i have a theory that female business school and law school grads have more circulating testosterone than the average woman.” Really? The smart women don’t stick around for your crap?

what does what i wrote have to do with what you just concluded by sheer speculation?
answer: nothing.

But it’s because they have hairy arms (which you literally said several times and accused me of having).

it’s not a perfect science, but studies have shown that women with higher circulating testosterone have hairier forearms. i have observed a trend among high achieving women to sport lush thickets of forearm hair.
they also orgasm more easily through intercourse.

The women who make it through more than a community college leave you/pre-reject you because they’re just…. unnatural.

you’ve concocted quite an extensive fantasyland of me and my life. people will think you’re in love!

Yeah, don’t think you can pander to the winners on this board with your personality or accomplisments ladies. Because all you have to offer is your number one asset, if it’s up to par.

hate to break it to ya, but yeah, men dig beauty. and disfiguring her beauty by getting fat is one of the worst things a woman can do to herself if she wants to stay competitive in the dating market.
this is not to say that looks are sufficient for committed relationships. men do look for other qualtieis in a woman when considering her for the long haul.

Get off this “Dizzy you suck” thing.

why should i when i’m having so much fun!

Because you’re down to renaming me “tizzy.” Repeatedly. Like that’s smart or something.

no fault divorce (men don’t get them), financial independence (who wants a woman who wants you when you could have a woman who depends on you), feminization of early education (which is why middle class white males educational achievements still equal that of middle class white females), date rape hysteria (I’ll introduce you to the women I know who’ve been date raped, and you call them hysterical), glass ceiling speciousness (, quotas (where?), sensitivity classes (boo freaking hoo), and total rejection of biological underpinnings to sex differences (not true) plus a demonization of masculine desire (because traditional views of men as sexually uncontrollable beasts in the 50’s wasn’t demonization–also, repeat after me sugar, not yielding to your charms isn’t a problem with masculine desire) all add up to an attempt to make it easier for women to get what they want in the highest stakes game of dna transmittal and harder for the average man to do the same. (Sweetie, reproduction can’t be zero sum. Unless you can show me that there is a significant number of alpha males fathering children on multiple women, so to skew the statistics so much that average men are fathering less children, you’re basically full of it.)

Really. Prove something. I’ve disproven you on the WHR thing, so produce a study showing that a large enough number of men are fathering children on multiple women, who would otherwise be having children with “average” men.

no shit. no fault divorce favors women. that’s one major reason why the divorce rate skyrocketed after no-fault was instituted and why today women instigate the majority of divorce filings.
thank you for proving my point.

financial independence (who wants a woman who wants you when you could have a woman who depends on you),

economic independence made it harder for the average beta to score a wife or a girlfriend and allowed women to play the field longer in hopes of roping an alpha male.

date rape hysteria (I’ll introduce you to the women I know who’ve been date raped, and you call them hysterical),

anecdote is not data.

sensitivity classes (boo freaking hoo),

way to take the moral high ground, sympathy-girl.

plus a demonization of masculine desire (because traditional views of men as sexually uncontrollable beasts in the 50’s wasn’t demonization–also, repeat after me sugar, not yielding to your charms isn’t a problem with masculine desire)

crackpot sexual harassment laws, anyone?

Sweetie, reproduction can’t be zero sum.

reproduction is the only thing that is zero sum, since there are a finite number of fertile age women.
and use of the term of endearment ‘sweetie’ by a woman who is getting publicly humiliated by her tormentor is a dead giveaway that her emotional state is shaken.

so to skew the statistics so much that average men are fathering less children, you’re basically full of it

you must be unfamiliar with the data that show rich, high status males father more children over their lifetimes than average males. and high status women had fewer children than high status males, so obviously those alpha males must have been fucking around.

I’ve disproven you on the WHR thing,

actually, you haven’t, which i’ve already explained to you.
it’s funny that those links you sent buttressed so many of my views!
thin is in, darlin’. as it has always been.

Finally, one aspect of the Montreal shootings that I didn’t understand until years later, because the papers downplayed it: the class was a mixed class, full of men and women. The gunman cleared the men out first, and then shot the women. Not one of the men tried to organize a group effort to disarm the man, or even to call for help once they had got out of the room. It wasn’t like the Virginia shootings last spring, in which the earlier victims had no time to think before the killing started. There are some good things to be said about “essentialist” men – who might have been expected to be a little less passive.

It doesn’t surprise me in the least. In fact, the Montreal incident was a prelude to something vastly more significant, namely the 9/11 attacks. As I’ve noted about 5,000 times on other forums, the real outrage of 9/11 is that a handful of hijackers armed with not-very-deadly weapons were able to take over the airplanes despite being greatly outnumbered – on the two WTC aircraft, the hijackers were outnumbered 8 to 1 by fight-capable passengers, which I have somewhat arbitrarily defined as males between the ages of 16 and 55. The lesson of 9/11, and of Montreal, is that middle-class or higher white American (or Canadian) men have a nearly visceral inability to use physical force to defend themselves or others, even when the stakes are literally life-or-death. If you’re a typical middle-aged businessman type, the very thought of slamming your fist into another man’s face is nearly unthinkable.

Peter – In defense of the passengers in the 9/11 planes, they had no way of knowing that their aircraft was going to be used as a weapon. They probably thought it was a standard hijacking; dangerous, sure, but not something that was likely to lead to their deaths or the deaths of 3,000 other people. The assumption before 9/11 was that hijacked planes would eventually land in another country, whereupon the passengers would be returned home. So if they cooperated, they would live. If they fought back, there was a chance not only that they themselves would die, but that they would also put fellow passengers at risk if the terrorists decided to send a message by killing others that didn’t revolt.

The reason that the United 93 passengers fought back was that they had received news of the attacks on their cell phones. Knowing that they would likely be killed in a similar suicide run, it’s assumed they fought their hijackers.

I think that when the chips are down, Americans are still capable of rising to the occasion. But they have to be aware the chips are down.